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Today I want to talk about the upside of exploring and being open to other people’s opinions. I’d like to have some fun with how being curious about what other people think might help us to create deeper connections with others while expanding and enriching our own opinions.
As I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about around the topic of other people’s opinions I decided to search “opinions” on my podcast app. This search came up with all sorts of interesting podcasts, three that had the exact same title I had come up with when I wrote down the idea for this post. After listening to a couple of these podcasts, I’d like to clarify that today’s message won’t be about how other people’s opinions of us don’t matter. It won’t be about how we get to choose who we want to be. It won’t be about how I highly encourage everyone to drop all of their concerns about what others think of them and to fully live their life out loud and real. While I am in love with that version of other people’s opinions, I talk about it often and will most certainly visit it again, that’s not where we will be going in this post.
Being open to someone else’s opinion even when you might not agree with them.
I’d like to use a recent example from one of my teachers, Gay Hendricks. As I went through one of his courses, I discovered that he is no longer a Christian and he briefly explains why. As a Christian myself, I felt a bit of resistance when his belief came up because I had been deeply enjoying the course and his concepts. I felt a tug of fear that his beliefs might convince me of his argument against Christianity and at the same time, I questioned whether I would be able to fully embrace the full course if I disagreed with his opinion. I felt this resistance and allowed myself to open up to what he had to say, to listen with an open mind and to question it all. I questioned his belief, as well as mine, then I allowed myself to watch what happened. As time passed I was able to continue to visit both perspectives and it opened me up to something truly beautiful. God used Gay’s words to enrich my current life, to deepen my connection with Jesus, and to set my mission on fire.
Had I chosen to close my mind to Gay’s teaching strictly because of his religious beliefs, I would have not only missed a deepening of my own faith but also would have lost an incredible learning experience from his course. I bought his course to deepen my relationship with myself, shutting my mind to him because of his opinion would have shut my mind to learning. Being open to his opinion not only taught me so much about how to better love myself, but it also deepened my relationship with my God and my experience of this life.
Being honest
Many of us are people pleasers, attempting to make other people happy so they will like us. What that means for us is that we might lie about what we believe or about our indifference, in an attempt to make others feel good and like us. We might agree when we don’t agree or we might pretend to know something when we don’t. We conform. I want to highly encourage you to be honest with yourself and others. If you don’t know what they are talking about, be curious, ask questions, be ok with not knowing, and wanting to understand. If you have your own opinion share it honestly, open up the conversation to curiosity, see what you might learn from each other. Don’t be afraid of weakening your current opinion, continual exploration will better solidify your current belief or educate you into a belief that feels right for you, which may, or may not be similar to your surrounding peoples’.
Learn from other people’s opinions
Being open to other people’s opinions allows you to connect with others in a deeper way, you get to talk about things that matter instead of boring things that really don’t matter.
Being open to other people’s opinions allows you to broaden your mind, to think things that you might not have thought about had you not opened yourself up to the conversation.
Being open to other people’s opinions allows you to come up with some of your own new opinions by taking what you already know, or didn’t know, combining it with someone else’s perspective and coming up with your own unique twist on it all. It will prompt you to schedule time to self educate on the subject to help reinforce, or change, your current opinion.
Today I want to challenge you to get uncomfortable in a conversation and of course since we are working on that love relationship, why not start with them? How might you be just agreeing with them instead of being curious about expressing your own belief? What might they think of you if you actually started speaking from your heart, with your own mind? Maybe that’s what you’re worried about, that they might not like you now, and what if they don’t? That my friend is the topic of discussion for the other article about other people’s opinions!
How can you question from a place of curiosity instead of defensiveness?
Can you simply ask why when they present something that makes you wonder?
I want to encourage you to learn something new about your partner, in the process you might also learn something about you.
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Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!
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